SUPPLEMENTAL NOTE. 
222 
Supplementary Note. 
Since the previous pages MTre written Sir Roderick Impey 
Murchison has published in the Quarterly Journal of the 
Geological Society, No. 19, his Memoir on the Structure of the 
Alps. The identification of a vast bed of lower tertiary which 
co\ers much of the mighty mountain chain, and extends south¬ 
ward and eastward through Egypt and] Syria into Central Asia 
and India, is one fruit of the extensive researches recorded in this 
communication. Henceforth the eocene tertiary will \ae in extent 
with the older formations. Sir Roderick grapples with the much 
agitated question (referred to ante p. 206) of the plants of car¬ 
boniferous species being associated with belemnites of liassic 
species. He concludes a full statement of the evidence by ex¬ 
pressing his conviction that the physical fact - is wtII established : 
after observing on the fossils he adds, “ If the previous statement 
of the geological relations at Petit Cceur he, as I think, accurate^ 
i. e. if the plants and belemnites really lie in the same deposit, as 
was also concluded by the geologists of the French Society, w'ho 
met at Chamber)', the anomaly is great, and involves us in con¬ 
siderable natural-history difficulties. But are these difficulties 
insurmountable, and ought geologists to shrink from endeavouring 
to reconcile them because they interfere with the general distribu¬ 
tion of fossil plants } Excluding for the present all theory, let me 
say that I cannot admit the presence of certain species of fossil 
plants to be as decisive of the age of a deposit as that of the re¬ 
mains of any w'ell-knowm animal. Thus, the Catamites arenarim 
cited by Brogniart as pertaining to the old coal, is found both in 
the Permian system and in the Bunter sandstein and Keuper, or 
throughout the Trias, a system in which no one palaeozoic animal 
has been detected. Again, the Equisetum columnare, which so 
abounds in the Brora (oolite) coal, and is most abundant on the 
Yorkshire coast beneath the Kelloway rock, is one of the most 
common of the trias plants of Germany. And yet as a wdiole, 
both the fauna and flora of the middle oolite and trias are utterly 
dissimilar.’' 
